tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4000642393175378494.post7781780241120150298..comments2023-09-15T04:44:05.493-07:00Comments on Crumbs at the Feast: Taking Up a CrossNeil Ellis Ortshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12055904122133673244noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4000642393175378494.post-9757394502078824372011-03-11T20:35:48.522-08:002011-03-11T20:35:48.522-08:00"By Jove, I think he's got it!"
Exce..."By Jove, I think he's got it!"<br />Excellent insight, especially at the end. I was stuck for years at a point where if I couldn't understand it, couldn't see a plan, couldn't know it would "succeed", I wasn't moving. Heck, it couldn't be God.<br />But it really is about faith. Jesus only did what he saw the father do and heard the father say. But we're never told that he got all the details any more than we do. At some point he realized he was going to the cross. We don't know when, but I have to suspect that since he "grew in stature and wisdom" that he it wasn't one of his very first thoughts as a toddler. "Food. Mama. Faw down. Go cwoss." Yet he had faith, and he says that by virtue of his spirit being in us, we can do everything he did, we have all that he had.<br />It wasn't until I put all my expectations, my demands, my insistence on understanding and knowing the ending, my judging by whether something was likely succeed or fail, and just let him dance me through life-- sometimes across chasms, through fires and storms, etc-- that I really feel I have come alive, that I feel I am doing what he made me for, being who I both am supposed to be, and who I am.<br />And most of it, so far, doesn't look anything like a "proper" church ministry. More and more, the people I see closest to God, the people who seem to be making a difference, are those people, brother, whose vision doesn't fit into any of the standard church slots.<br />God's word for me this year (God's calendar, not ours) is, "there is no box". Day by day, I realize just how much of a box there isn't, and how freeing that is. (The only box in the newborn world was around one little tree. I firmly believe that had Adam and Eve kept their eyes and hearts on God, that box would have been removed, as in _Perelandra_, and we would all live in a world without boxes today. Instead, boxes went up all around, and even when God removes them, far too many of us insist we are still in them (not unlike the dwarves in _The Last Battle.))roadkills-r-ushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14029861300358380117noreply@blogger.com